School funding system attacked

Updated 10:13 pm, Monday, April 18, 2011

AUSTIN — State Senate leaders want to end the much-despised public education funding system by 2017, although they disagree on how to do it — and time is growing short.

Some prefer a goal to end the “target revenue” system based on what school districts received in 2006. That system has not been adjusted for inflation and has created huge funding disparities over the past five years. A goal of ending target revenue will keep pressure on lawmakers, Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said Monday.

But others argue that such a goal is meaningless until the state fixes its $5 billion-a-year structural revenue deficit.

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Lawmakers don't lack pressure, said Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio. “We lack courage, courage to admit that we made a mistake and how to fix it. ... We're not going after the core problem. All we can do is make the patient feel a little better while they are totally miserable, and we're not doing the cure.”

Shapiro's Senate Finance subcommittee on public school finance voted 4-2, with one other member not voting, for her Senate Bill 22, which tries to spread the pain of $4 billion in cuts to schools more fairly.

But the bill still leaves huge inequities, said Wayne Pierce, executive director of the Equity Center, a consortium of nearly 700 low- and midwealth school districts. The lowest 25 percent of districts would get an average of $5,500 per student at a tax rate of $1.11 while the highest 25 percent would get more than $7,000 per student even with a lower tax rate of $1.02, Pierce said.

Lawmakers are trying to write a new two-year state budget with about $23 billion less than needed to keep current funding levels. The Senate plan would cut public school funding by about $4 billion in the basic program, with more than $1 billion in additional cuts coming from discretionary grants, such as bonus pay for teachers.

“This bill is about meeting a financial crisis,” Shapiro said. “We're doing the best we can under the circumstances.”

The Senate plan “is about half as bad as the House, dictating a really bad outcome for public education in this state,” said Eric Hartman, legislative director for the Texas chapter of the American Federation of Teachers.

The plan would cut funding for the Northside Independent School District, Bexar County's largest, by $50.4 million in 2012 and $49.7 million in 2013. That amounts to $432 less per student next year and $412 less the year after

Former legislator Paul Colbert of Houston, a school finance expert, helped write legislation in 1987 creating the rainy day fund. He encouraged lawmakers to use the fund's $6.3 billion — what's left in the fund after the House voted to use $3.1 billion from it to balance the current budget — to help avoid steep cuts to public education.

But House leaders say many of their members are adamant against using the fund for the 2012-2013 budget.

The Senate won't debate the budget until next week, leaving only about a month to resolve huge differences with the House.

Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, is leading the movement to end the target revenue system and return public education to a formula-based funding system by 2017.

Keeping pressure on the system will obligate lawmakers to get rid of the target revenue system in 2017, Shapiro said.

But Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, disagrees, arguing that lawmakers must first fix the structural revenue deficit caused in 2006 when they cut school property taxes without raising enough revenue to make up the difference.

It might take a special legislative session to fix the school funding problem, said Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston.

“No one wants a special session, but I'm willing to stay as long as it takes to get it right,” Patrick said.

To truly tackle the school funding problem, Patrick suggested lawmakers will have to debate the structural revenue deficit, an expanded sales tax or even a statewide property tax.